#they’re having a blast in the ghost zone

[christaspirit]

“B, we got a lead.”

Bruce looked up from his breakfast. Tim had come up from the cave.

“What?” Bruce asked.

“It’s not much, but… Fenton has a sister,” Tim said. “She’s in California. She might know where he went.”

Bruce nodded.

“Alright, get everything you can on her,” Bruce said, “Do you think your team can handle this? She might be more comfortable with a younger team of heroes.”

Tim nodded.

“I’ll contact my team and we’ll leave in the morning,” Tim said.

I love the tropes where Danny is the normal while Tucker and Sam are fucking freaks, especially if those two just so non discreet about it.

So now, imagine Amity Park, after GIW has run rampant on it.

Tucker, shamelessly using magic for any convenience between himself and his lovers. A headcanon of mine is that Danny has chronic pain after the portal accident and Tucker liked to make it so Danny's bed and pillow softer and doesn't hesitate one bit to curse those mean Danny's harms.

Sam, likewise, uses her plant magic to trap those pesky ghost hunters and makes life difficult for them in general.

Tucker and Sam just don't expect for the GIW to report them to the Justice League. Or for the heroes to really come arresting them.

Danny, as expected, blows up.

[zhelin-thames]

Danny meets JL members #6

[Danny hovering over the ocean as Aquaman emerges dramatically from the water]

Aquaman: Who dares disturb the King of Atlantis? Danny: [blinks] Dude, I’m just chasing a ghost. Chill. Aquaman: The ocean is not your playground, child. Danny: [points to a glowing green ghost shark nearby] Tell that to him.

[Aquaman summons a squad of dolphins to attack the ghost shark while Danny blasts it with ectoplasm.]

Danny: Okay, not gonna lie—that was kinda cool. Aquaman: My connection to marine life is unmatched. Danny: Yeah, but can they shoot lasers out of their eyes? [grins as the ghost shark gets trapped in a green net]

Aquaman: So… you’re half-ghost? How does that work? Danny: Ghost portal accident. Long story. You? Aquaman: I’m half-Atlantean. Danny: Sweet. So we’re both part-something-else and full-time awesome.

[Aquaman on the surface, looking at Danny’s glowing green aura.]

Aquaman: Your powers—are they connected to the sea? Danny: Nah, they’re connected to the Ghost Zone. Totally different vibe. Aquaman: Can you breathe underwater? Danny: [phases underwater, talking perfectly normally] Yup. Perks of being dead-ish. Aquaman: Impressive. I’ll allow you passage through my domain. Danny: Wow, thanks, Your Fishiness.

[Later, Aquaman introduces Danny to a massive sea monster.]

Aquaman: This is The Kraken. Protector of the seas. Danny: [waves] Sup, big guy? The Kraken growls, glowing green like a ghost. Danny: Uh, hate to break it to you, but your Kraken’s haunted. Aquaman: WHAT?!

[Aquaman texting the Justice League group chat]

Aquaman: The ghost child just saved Atlantis from a haunted Kraken. Green Lantern: Did he actually save it, or did you mess it up first? Aquaman: He was helpful. Leave me alone. The Flash: Sounds like someone made a new friend. 🐟 Aquaman: I will end you.

[Back on land, Danny to Sam and Tucker]

Danny: So, I met Aquaman. He’s got a trident, commands fish, and yells a lot. Sam: Did you fight him? Danny: No, but I did help him with a haunted Kraken. Tucker: …Man, you have the weirdest life.

[tomboy014]

But if Batman won't adopt Danny... who will?

Starfire, and she is all over her new little brother!

Shortly after establishing the Teen Titans, Robin (Dick) introduces “Phantom” to the group, because seriously, he’s not introducing him as “Danny.”  Kinda defeats the purpose of a secret identity when you use your name in your superhero moniker.  And shows Phantom his room.

Robin’s actual goal is to get Phantom to join the Titans, but even taking short cuts through the Ghost Zone, Jump City is still a good ways away from Amity Park, and he has parents, so… It’s still a nice gesture and all, and Phantom will come visit, but no.

Still, he’s never met other teens who are heroes in their own right like he is, so he’s excited to meet Robin’s new team.  The other Titans think it’s a little weird for this not-member to have his own room in the Tower, but the place is huge, and Robin trusts him, so it’s fine.  It’s a bit awkward at first as they’re all still getting used to each other, but Phantom quickly makes friends with all of them.

But it’s his friendship with Starfire that grows first and fastest.  As soon as he finds out she’s an alien from another planet, he latches on and must know everything.  Starfire more than welcomes the attention. While she knows the Titans care for her, they’re not always… receptive to the traditions and customs of her culture. Phantom, on the other hand, is enraptured as she tells him about her culture, her holidays, the planets she’s been to, everything.

So she asks if he’d be interested in learning Tamaranean? Yes! 100%! Absolutely! Phantom picks up the language quickly and returns the favor by helping Starfire with her English. While the ability to absorb language through lips is handy, it’s by no means perfect, and Phantom helps her with things like contractions, slang, idioms, etc.

It also helps that after a couple sparring sessions with each other, Phantom and Starfire realize just how durable their partner is.  For Starfire, the people and things on Earth can be so delicate. And for Phantom, if he doesn’t watch himself and hurts a human too badly, it’s just more justification to call him an “evil ghost” that should be ripped apart molecule by molecule. Both are thrilled to finally be able to fight all out again without worrying about the consequences if they lose. And Starfire also uses it to teach Phantom some Tamaranean martial arts for aerial combat so maybe he’ll stop crashing into so many walls.

But what really changes the relationship is the Body Swap incident (not to be confused with the Freaky Friday incident). Similar to what happened with the Puppet King in Switched, Phantom and Starfire switch bodies while fighting an enemy.  Unlike what happened in Switched, Phantom and Starfire and two teen powerhouses with green energy powers triggered by emotions. And the emotional triggers they use are in the same ballpark. Starfire’s “unbridled joy of flight” to fly is very similar to how Phantom revels in the pure freedom of flight he feels. Both get angry when they use blasts. It’s very much a “if you believe in it, you can do it” kind of power set. Starfire can’t really figure out Phantom’s more ghostly abilities like invisibility or intangibility, but they very quickly adapt to each other’s shared powers on the fly during battle.  But there’s one power Starfire wants to use against the hordes of minions that Phantom won’t share the trigger for: the Ghostly Wail.  He tries to tell her it’s not a good move, that it’ll use up too much power, it should only be used as a last resort, it’ll cause too much collateral damage, etc., but Starfire wants to know, and eventually he tells her.

“T-terror… and desperation.”

Starfire rushes to give Phantom the biggest hug ever because those are such horrible feelings, and she doesn’t want to imagine what conditions must have led to him developing such a power because no one should have to feel such feelings. He is right; and that is not a power she needs to use to win this battle.  The minions are defeated, the villain is forced into a temporary retreat, and the Teen Titans return to the Tower to regroup and plan.

However, Starfire doesn’t know how to power through and hold onto Phantom’s ghostly form, and as soon as the adrenaline from the fight wears off, rings of white light spread out of her middle, and Phantom turns back into Danny in the middle of the living room.

But more importantly, everyone needs to get out of the way RIGHT NOW because while Phantom can ignore his biological needs for days, Danny can’t, and Starfire has never had to pee this badly ever in her whole life and everyone needs to MOVE, PLEASE! as she rushes into the nearest bathroom.

Phantom/Danny is now panicking, because even as an alien, he’s pretty sure she’s bound to notice that some bits of male anatomy that should be there are… missing.  He’s begging her, through the door in Tamaranean, not to tell anyone about his secret.  He’s not ready to come out yet, and he’s honestly pretty scared he’s about to lose her friendship, too.  Starfire doesn’t really care. So long as you’re a strong warrior, Tamaraneans don’t care what’s going on in someone’s pants, and she’s just relieved she didn’t have to figure out different plumbing while in his body.  Starfire opens the door.  While she knows that the people of Earth are not always as understanding, Danny need not fear her.  She will not tell anyone he's trans until he is ready to tell them himself and supports him and goes in for a hug.

Except you haven’t washed your hands; gross!  They both laugh it off, but when Starfire goes to wash her hands, the water freezes.  The cold energy in Danny’s core is building, and Starfire doesn’t know how to let it out.  They need to switch back to their own bodies soon, or Danny’s body, and Starfire, might not survive.  A little more training so Starfire can turn back into Phantom, and the Titans are ready for the final act, take down the final villain and Starfire and Phantom are back in their own bodies. 

But after that, Phantom is no longer Starfire’s friend.  Danny is her little brother, and she tells him her name is Koriand’r, or Kor’i for short.

<<Prev Next>>

[tales-of-the-ghost-zone]

DP x MCU crossover

Sometime after Howard and Maria Stark’s death, Hydra decides to try and make a clone of Tony Stark, that’s infused with Super Soldier serum. They were hoping to get a super smart super soldier that they could control.

And thus Danny was born.

At some point when he’s like 2 or 3 one of the Hydra agents whose been his handler since he was born grows a conscious after witnessing the most recent experiment the other scientists in the lab put Danny through. They take Danny and run away from the lab. They don’t get away clean tho, they had to fight their way out of the lab and they were injured in the process. They wind up in Amity Park with baby Danny and come across the Fenton Parents. They hand Danny over to them and tell them to protect and look after the kid. And then they die.

The Fenton parents adopt Danny and raise him as their own. Danny grows up not knowing he’s adopted or that he’s a clone and a super soldier. The ghost portal accident happens when he’s 14 like cannon. The reason he survived and only half died is because of the super soldier serum in his blood.

Eventually, after the whole events of the Danny Phantom series has passed (minus Phantom Planet because fuck that horrible ending to the series). Danny, after defeating Pariah Dark, is now the king of the ghost zone. He still doesn’t realize he’s a clone of Tony Stark. Despite the fact that he looks exactly like a 17 year old version of the man!!!

And then New York happens. A portal opens up in the skies above New York, and aliens come pouring out of it! You bet your ass Danny hightailed it over to New York to help out the group of heroes that were trying to stop the aliens. He’s super hyped to fight aliens!!! He’s just having a blast zooming through the skies of New York, around skyscrapers, throwing punches and ecto-blasts at aliens, helping out the other heroes.

Meanwhile every time he helps one of the Avengers they all double take when they finally get a look at his face. Cause like yes this floating glowing child has glowing green eyes and Snow White hair, but the rest of his face looks like a very young Tony Stark. After each encounter with the boy the different Avengers call Tony over the coms to ask his status and to reassure themselves that Tony hadn’t been de-aged and given super powers mid battle.

Tony is the last one of them that meets Danny. He’s super annoyed at the fact everyone keeps calling him over the coms to ask his status. Like yeah he’s not a super soldier and doesn’t have powers, but neither does Romanoff or Barton!!! And unlike them he has his own super suit to protect him. So why is everyone calling in to check on him?!!!

And then finally Danny comes zooming around a building chasing after Loki’s chariot, shouting sarcastic quips at the god, while firing green blasts from his fists. And Tony just kind of blue screens for a minute. Jarvis has to take over piloting the suit for a minute while Tony reboots. He’s def got the surprised Pikachu face going on. Finally he reboots but Danny’s already flown off to deal with something else.

The battle comes to an end, the portal closes, the world is safe, and all the Avengers all head towards Stark tower. Danny sees them and where they’re headed and decides to meet them there. He’s been the only super hero around for a while and he wants to actually properly interact with these new hero’s!

Imagine his shock when he actually finally comes face to face with Tony Stark and finally realizes how much he looks like the man. He starts panicking thinking his mom had an affair with the man 17 years ago and just passed him off as Jack Fenton’s son.

Absolute chaos ensues as assumptions are made. DNA tests happen. They realize that no he is not Tony’s kid, he’s Tony’s clone. More assumptions are made. No body is having a good time.

[pekoehoneyncream]

Ghoaptober # 11

Prompt: Fire

Words: 1100~

TW: Unhappy Ending (sfw)

This version of Ghoaptober was created by @spadesandshovels

Yep, this one's all angst. Feel free to yell at me about it. I'm almost sorry.

Enjoy!

Stepping into his room Ghost’s eyes immediately caught on a discrepancy in his usually well organized space. There was a battered black notebook open, pages-down, on his bed. Almost completely hidden under his pillow, which was also crumpled in the centre of his bed.

Ghost could piece together what happened. Johnny had come into his room to draw or just get some thoughts down in his journal, lost track of time, then scrambled to leave when one of the alarms he'd set reminded him that he had somewhere to be. 

Ghost had told Johnny that he was always welcome in his room, had given him a copy of his key and everything. Officer’s rooms were a bit more cushy than the bunks the Sergeants got and Ghost’s room was very deliberately in one of the quietest sections of the base. People tended to bug Johnny when he had down time, wanting his help or to hang out. Without Ghost there to act as a looming dissuading presence Johnny hardly gets a moment of quiet and it can wear on him, so Ghost was glad to see that Johnny was taking his offer seriously. 

He drops his pillow back into its place at the head of his bed, then picks up Johnny’s journal. He rummages through the blanket creases for the pen and opens the notebook to tuck it inside as he’s watched Johnny do innumerous times. 

Across the full two page spread are, from what Ghost can tell, messy calculations for various mixes of explosives. Price had banned Johnny from asking what the new demo buildings are made of or how they’re being built, evidently that has not stopped Johnny from making some very good guesses. He’s been making estimates just on how long it’s been taking, what construction he’s heard, the various supplies he’s spotted being toted to the blasting zones, and what he knows of the budget.

The clever little fucker.

He’s even sketched out some of Price’s favourite training floorplans, from memory, as Price only gives those specs to the actual builders. Ghost should probably give Price a heads up, but he won’t. Let Johnny have his fun. 

Ghost’s flipped to the next page and tucked the pen into the crease before he realizes that the pages aren’t blank. The left is filled by various upclose studies of a pair of dark eyes and the full length of the right is filled by a portrait. 

Ghost isn't scared of his reflection, the man he sees in the mirror is him. Is The Ghost. Empty haunted eyes, jagged scars cutting across pocked skin, the ugly sneer that lurks in the corners of his mouth. It's all familiar to him. 

This portrait isn’t of The Ghost.

There’s a fondness in the creases around the eyes, a tenderness held by the lips that are pulled up into a fragile smile, a softness given to the shadows cast gently over what should be harsh edges. There's a warmth to it that The Ghost has never had.

This is a portrait of Simon Riley.

Ghost reflexively drops the book when the heat sears his fingers, narrowly missing his bed by sheer brainless luck. He watches the pile of papers burn for one uncomprehending moment, then panic punches him in the lungs. Dropping the lighter he doesn’t remember pulling out, Ghost scrambles to pick up the notebook, forcing himself to not let go even when the fire creeps up to lick across his fingers. He crashes into his bathroom, throws it into the sink and yanks the faucet handles fully open. Drowning the fire and dousing the notebook. 

Turning off the tap, he stares down at Johnny’s journal. It’s soaked through with a few sad wisps of smoke still rising from its charred edges, slowly collapsing in on itself to match the curve of his sink’s basin. The only thought he can fully form is a strange gratitude that he’d long ago disabled his room’s smoke-detector to smoke his cigarettes in peace. If this had turned into a base wide fiasco he would've resurrected Roba, handed the man a shovel, and told him to do it right this time. 

“Si?” 

Ghost hadn’t thought that he could get more panicked, but Johnny’s confused voice from the doorway shot his heartbeat into a tempo that surely wasn’t medically advisable. 

“Johnny!” He whirls around to face him, subconsciously keeping in front of the sink to block it from view, “I can explain!”

“Explain wha’, Si. Why’s it smell like you're burning some’hing?” Johnny steps closer, looking at him with such warm concern.

Ghost desperately doesn’t want to lose him.

“I didn’t mean to-” He starts to explain, but Johnny had come close enough now to see what he’d been hiding.

“Is…” Soap sounds hesitantly confused, like he already knows, but can’t quite bring himself to accept it, “Is that my journal?” He looks up at Ghost, his eyes begging for Ghost to give him any other answer, “Simon?” 

“I didn’t mean to!” Ghost repeats frantically, “I just-”

“Wait,” Soap interrupts, holding up his hands in between them to stop Ghost’s approach. When had Ghost started walking towards him? “You burned my journal?” 

“Yes.” Ghost confesses, wishing it wasn't the truth, “but I didn’t mean-”

“Why would you do that?” Soap’s voice is rising to match Ghost’s agitated volume, but he still sounds more confused than angry. 

“I saw the picture you drew and then it was- It was on fire,” Ghost tries to explain, reaching forward and flinching back when Soap dodges away from his grip. “I hadn’t meant-”

“You burned my journal,” Soap’s words twist with incredulity, “because you didn’t like what I drew?” 

“No!” Ghost hastily corrects, because he would never, then has to take it back, because evidently he would, “Well, yes, but it was a picture of me-”

“And that gives you the right to burn my journal!?” Soap is starting to sound properly angry now, and Ghost has never had the best reactions to people yelling at him.

“Well maybe if you hadn't left it laying around on my bed. This wouldn’t have happened at all!”

“You said I could!”

“I said that you could come in! Not start treating my room like it’s your own personal pigsty!” 

“Oh, well I’m sorry.” Soap bites sarcastically, “Next time you forget something in my room, I’ll be sure to return the favour!” 

They’re both properly worked up now, heaving for breath on opposite sides of Ghost’s room, like they’re feral things barely holding back from tearing the other apart. 

“You know what.” Soap says, and Ghost knows by the clever glint in his eye that he’s not going to like what he says next, “Don’t worry about it. This is on me. I should have known better than to trust The Ghost with anything I’d want kept safe.”

He waits to see the devastation gore through Ghost's eyes, then gives a self-satisfied nod and turns on his heels to slam out the door.

Leaving Ghost there, with his guts pulled out and his heart beating hollow in his chest. The taste of regret on his tongue sharp with salt. 

Thank You For Reading!

The alternate ending that I considered for this one was Soap taking the blame and apologizing for what he calls 'overstepping Ghost's boundaries' by drawing his face when he knows how sensitive Ghost is about that, which makes Ghost feels extra bad.

PekoeHoneynCream's Masterlist

[earlgreyinpajamas]

hiya! i recently binge-watched the pierce brosnan movies and i absolutely love how joyful and innovative desmond llewelyn’s Q is. do you have any fic recs where ben whishaw’s Q is trained under or heavily influenced by the older Q? thanks so much!!

1. the ghosts still left behind by pdameron ( @slverjohn)

Nine hundred miles away from where the man who will be Q sits grieving his sister, James Bond hears the story of a young woman who would have done anything to keep her little brother safe, even if it meant betraying the man she loved.

Even if it meant sacrificing her own life for his.

****

a Q origin story masquerading as another "Vesper is Q's sister" fic.

~~~

best fic to ever fic (and also fits your ask the best). i said what i said

2. Ulysses by girlbookwrm

“Paperwork for the new head of Q-Branch,” Tanner said.

“Of course.” The words were like glass in his throat. Smoke inhalation was a bitch. His brain felt slow and foggy, like it was full of smoke too. “Who shall I take them to?”

M lifted one white brow. “They’re for you, Quartermaster.”

Bond and Q are drawn together by names, work, and a certain Aston Martin. In which Q is kidnapped once, Bond is poisoned twice, and Eve is a badass on at least three occasions. AKA that time I tripped and wrote 80,000 words of 00Q.

All titles unapologetically stolen from Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

~~~

there is a slight mention of the former q in the beginning in pretty neutral tones, so i'm not entirely sure what their relationship was dskfsh im so sorry this is pretty much the best i can do atp

3. Risk ratio by withered (@everything-withered)

Bond is dangerous.

Never to England. Never to the Crown. Never to MI6.

But everyone else is in the blast zone.

Q included.

~~~

there is a slight mention of the former q, but it isn't in the most flattering terms. unfortunately there doesn't seem to be many fics that fit your ask :(( sorry

[arbiterlexultionis]

Instant Eternity

Time travel involving the infinite realms is truly a bizarre thing. Sometimes it follow one set of rules, and sometimes that set of rules may as well not exist. Usually, however, it works in one of two ways, the first is when the time travel is achieved through artificial means such as clockworks portals and allows for the altering of the timeline as one would expect time travel would allow. The other type of time travel is through natural means, portals usually, and it’s just that, Natural. That portal to the past opened up in the past the same moment it did in the present. If you step into the portal in the year 2000 then you already stepped out of the portal hundreds of years ago. It’s A Thing That Already Happened. Danny himself experienced this, as while chasing Vlad through time they fought in the middle of a Roman coliseum and, whoopsy daisy, set a really big fire. A fire which Danny had learned about years before he even had his accident.

So, the infimap can take the user anywhere, anywhen. And the infimap is just that, a map. It doesn’t make new roads, it just drags you across already existing paths. So it is a natural form of time travel, if you use it to go in time to kill your grandfather in order to insure your never born your interference will result in your grandparents falling in love and your birth.

Danny realizes that anytime he needs to heal from a battle or has gone 156 hours without sleeping or eating he can use the infimap to pop back to the past for a few days and then have the map bring back to the “Present”, exactly one second after he left. A three week vacation that lasted one second. At first he’s really wary about using this, worried about accelerated aging or getting lost in the time stream and a hundred other issues. At first.

It’s been months sense the accident. Sam and Tucker have both shot up several inches. Danny, on the other hand, hasn’t grown sense the accident. At all. They fought a ghost who could rapidly age opponents, a single slap turned Tucker into a decrepit old man. The ghost wrapped his hands around Danny’s throat and spent 5 minutes trying to strangle him while Danny bought time for Sam and Tucker to pull off the plan. The sucked him into the thermos, his influence on time ceased so Tucker returned to his proper state. “Jeez it sure is lucky he didn’t try and age me, right guys? Ha ha ha”. Danny gets blasted through a natural portal while making a trip through the zone and spends years trying to get home, not aging a day.

He can’t deny it after that, can’t ignore it. He’s immortal. He’s going to live forever. He’s going to watch his friends and family whither away and die out. He’s going to have to spend the rest of his life wandering from place to place trying not to get outed as the same 14 year old who save someone’s great great grandma 100 years ago.

After having his first middeath crisis, suddenly the only reasons he had to not spend years on end wandering the world and the past is gone, even if he loses the infimap, worst case scenario he’ll just take the long way home. Suddenly, he’s dreading the next 80 years of the “Present”. He decides that if he’s going to watch his friends and family grow old and frail he’s going to make sure it’s takes as long as it possibly could, from his perspective. By the time they’re 20 Danny’s gonna have 200 years under his belt.

He becomes a temporal tourist, hopping into the past every time the late night fights and schoolwork become to much. Spends years in every civilization imaginable, mastering every skill he can, leaving legends in his wake.

I feel like Danny and his adventures do have a lot of potential for story’s, as it’s a pretty good setup for having Danny in any type of time period or historical event for extended periods of time, fighting in the trenches of World War I, exploring the Americas during the era of colonialism, sailing the seas a swashbuckling vigilante pirate. I, however, have most of my related ideas being based around crossovers. So most of that will be in part two, so that people who like to filter out all that can still see this post.

[ectocreature]

badger cereal, anyone?

i let myself have fun and go ham on the designs instead of trying to restrict myself to canon appearances and I honestly have no regrets

shoutout to my beloved pookie bear lightningbug Sparkz for helping me figure out how to make vlad’s ecto acne scars look btw…. his input was crucial to not having vlad’s face look horribly crowded…

the concept here is that they get blasted by some new fenton invention, probably some smaller, handheld version of the ecto-stoppo-power-o-fier or something. either way, they can’t change back and they’re getting weaker so now they’re being forced to work together. danny gets dragged around like a sack of potatoes and vlad has to listen to danny loudly swearing because he does not want to be here

at some point they get stuck in the ghost zone somehow, and now they’ve gotta dodge a ton of shit while they figure out how to remedy this. bonding ensues

[yekokataa]

Pale lore in Sacred and Terrible Air

I pulled together some of my favorite descriptions of the Pale from Kurvitz's novel. All excerpts are from the excellent fan translation by Group Ibex, which I think really nailed the style of the game in these quotes.

Warning: Full of SPOILERS and extremely LONG!

The Pale, up close:

The main characters take a road trip to the Lemminkäise zone of entroponetic catastrophe in Katla. They hire a racecar driver and drive to the very edge of the disaster zone, where matter is actively dissolving into the Pale.

The border point disappeared behind them, along with the invisible boundary of winter’s orbit, beyond which is eternal winter. The asphalt also disappeared over time; they encountered rural families on sleds along snowy gravel roads. It is their great privilege to have seen the pale with their own eyes, where it has towered behind the silo since childhood. 

Kenni sees the black mass of the forest slowly drifting into the sky. The earth crunches and cracks as the spruce trees tear themselves out of it, roots and all. The wood screams, and the frozen earth too, like they’re in a dentist’s chair. A cloud of limestone gravel flies into the air, and far above in the dark, the first trees are subsumed in the pale. 

Tereesz, Khan, and the mad Suruese driver look outside, their heads tilted back, as the pale approaches from behind the house. Inside, the bass drum thumps robustly, and outside, behind the silhouette of the building, the dark mass of the forest rolls up into the sky across the entire visible horizon. The pale rises vertically from the spruce forests like a wave, from the mountain ranges above the expanse of the world. Its horror moves slowly, humming over the world, but the world is made of matter, and matter is evergreen, ancient; it sustains itself with surprising dignity even at the moment of disappearance.

The pale can lift up entire houses! Holy shit! Our boys make a narrow escape from the edge of the encroaching pale as a house is torn away from its foundation.

In the yard, where the wheels of the motor carriage have drawn a loop in the snow, Inayat Khan looks up at a farm building that hovers above him like a ghost. Electrical wire entrails hang out of the rotating object, black against the expanse of the starry sky. It drifts on into the pale with a self-evident calm. Up above, a trail of its furniture and crumbling foundation remains. In the yard in front of him, Khan watches how a startled Tereesz and Kenni follow the object’s path, their heads tilting back until they hit the wooden fence behind them.  In a strange, panic-free concern, they all look in the direction of Ulv’s crumbling house. It seems as if every little crack comes from its limestone foundation. Soon it will rise up. But nothing happens. The pale freezes in place far away, behind the house; the creaking of the forest stops, and the music in the house also stops. Somewhere in the perceptible distance, on the edge of the frozen pale above, the farmhouse falls apart and disappears.  […] The engine revs up and the carriage’s wheels spin in the snow. The mass of the pale can no longer support its phantom weight. It breaks down. The vast clearings crumple under it in an instant, exploding with powder snow; a collapse like a shock wave whirls over the world. Spruce trees bow under the blow, and the pale blasts open the windows of the old decaying manor house. It arches around the edges of the house, as if hesitating for a moment, and then explodes together, encompassing it. The pale grabs the manor in its lap, and somewhere inside, in a room with a low ceiling, the young man puts on his headphones. He reads the sweeping pale like a magnetic reader reads a Stereo 8 tape. […] The pale blows across the fields, on both sides of the village road. Its avalanche crashes onto the gravel; the rumbling wall approaches, glowing crimson from the motor carriage’s tail lights. 

Travel through the Pale:

Floating magnet trains seem common, and they even go through the Pale. There's a brief mention that Tereesz once spent a week on a magnet train and was then told he wasn't allowed to travel for a year afterwards due to the dangers of pale exposure.

Outside on the platform, giant buffers are being pulled off the train. The umbilical cord is cut and thus, freed from the connecting bridges, the entire weight of the train with its five-fold carriage slats sinks onto the magnets. They howl at full power below the train cars. And then the flight begins.  The magnetic support splits the North Sea under it in two. It’s quiet inside, the generators humming as the train whizzes by fifty metres above the water. The three of them stand together, laughing. Tereesz extinguishes his smoke in a bronze ashtray, and they turn their back on the observation windows. Ahead, the pale awaits, and past it begins a big world. […] Through the windows, all that’s left of the city behind them is the light pollution, a golden glow in the distant darkness of the snowstorm. 

This floating train station has an illustration Rostov by the way.

For a historical travel example: the famous disappearance of the airship Harnankur. This airship was referenced in the game in the form of the 50-real vodka in the special edition commemorative bottle! Rostov's illustration from the novel is here, showing a model of the ship in Khan's basement.

One hundred and fifty years ago, on another isola—the Graad isola—it snows in the city of Mirova. It’s a midwinter evening, but thousands of people have gathered in the harbour. The quay bustles with them. In the background lies imperial Graad—church steeples and chimneys. The crowd is waving, bidding farewell to the airship rising into the sky. A swan made of wood and nickel rises into the blizzard, and the passengers of the world’s first interisolary flight wave to the crowd from its balcony baskets: well-dressed boujee people, with a never-before-seen adventure ahead of them. It’s the pale—terrifying, but at the same time such an upbeat and unforgettable experience. Modern technology, in the form of a luxuriously upholstered airship, now makes such an experience possible for an ordinary, if perhaps slightly better off, citizen. And on the other side of the pale—oh mystical pale!—the land of Katla awaits, with its royal capital of Vaasa.  […] Two days later, the interisolary flight enters the pale, and then, barely six hours later, a deviation occurs in the airship’s course. “Harnankur” has gone missing with fifteen hundred passengers on board. The flight is believed to have drifted into an uncharted entroponetic mass, the pale superdeep. 

Sound

The pale makes a hissing sound. Here Khan receives a phone call from one of the missing presumed dead girls, who may be a ghost or part of the pale, it's all left very ambiguous. It reminds me of the part in the game where you can call Slipstream SCA and hear a ghost trapped in the phone.

He picks up the receiver, and the hallway fills with the hiss of the pale. It grates in his ear.  “Hello?” asks Khan. But no one answers. “Hello, who is it? Please tell me who you are!” he repeats, more and more pleading each time. The hissing becomes louder and louder, until finally it deafens him, the pressure in his inner ear goes awry, and only that vibration from who-knows-where remains, its centre. The silence goes through his flesh and bones like waves. It’s cold. 

Later, we learn that the pale can actually come through the phone lines?? Creepy!

The speaker switches to a long-distance call; the pale seeps into the hall air from the fabric-covered ziggurat. The signal runs as an entroponetic sequence through the Great Unknown, from Katla to Graad. Relay stations clear the call from the noise of history along the way, but something always creeps into the wires—a ghost radio station. Its quiet voice in its unintelligible language reminds us what it’s here for. To end life. 

It's also similar to the sounds of the pale latitude compressor! During a long distance call through the pale, a voice is heard spelling things out using an “international alphabet” like the real-world NATO phonetic alphabet.

This is how matter degrades, drop by drop, like an analog rhythm running from red through the colourless world. The international alphabet is hidden in the low-frequency waves, “... Nadir-Ellips-Gamut-Azimuth...” and so on, to the border of the settlement. 

Culture, ideology

Zigi as a teen is a total edgelord when it comes to talking about the pale:

But above all, Zigi is still a nihilist. He reads dia-mat [dialectical materialism], says that animals are automatons, is a fan of behaviourism, and adores the pale and the nihilistic innocence of Mesque, Ambrosius Saint-Miro. […] The geography teacher sent him to the principal’s office, and Zigi stopped at the door, the zippers of his leather jacket jingling. “See you in the pale,” he said, and ran his index finger across his throat. Back when entroponetics was not discussed at school, many people gathered around Zigi during recess, and the corridor echoed with his half-truths: “The pale is made of the past,” he said. “All the lost things are jumbled up there, sad and abandoned. The pale is the world’s memory of the world. It accumulates matter and sweeps away everything in its path. This is what’s called entroponetic collapse.”  “But when will it happen, Zigi?" “Yes, Zigi, when?” “It will happen in your lifetime, little Olle. At least, I hope so. History swallows the present; the world of matter disappears, desaparecido... That’s why there’s no point in our generation going to school. There will be no future. When you grow up, don’t have children like your underdeveloped bourgeois parents did. You’ll get to see them die, and that’s it. Compared to the pale, there’s only a small amount of the world left! In the end, the isolas will sink, dozens and hundreds of square kilometres of land mass, can you even imagine? Like a ship keeling over into the pale. Fwooom...” Zigi makes a sinking ship gesture with his hands, the zippers of his leather jacket jingling; the children gasp. “Don’t worry, Olle, this will be the peak of humanity.” 

In the game, Zigi's brand of entroponetic nihilism gets two very brief (and kind of hidden) mentions, where it's named as entropolism. I've got those quotes saved in my post here.

Waves

The pale seems very wave-like in that scene where it lifts a house, and apparently it's also like a wave according to science:

“It’s an oceanographic myth. The Killer Wave.” Little Khan points in the direction of the body of water. The four of them watch from the safe warmth of a beach towel. Insects buzz in the dark, around the gas lanterns. “For a long time it was just that—a myth, a sailor’s tale. Arda even has a mythological name for it: ‘halderdingr’. But now they’re a scientifically documented phenomenon, they really exist, you understand? This explains the dozens, hundreds of missing ships. […] “And you know what’s the most fucked up thing about it?” Khan asks slyly. He wipes his diamaterialist glasses and then puts them back on. His almond eyes squint behind the magnifying lenses, filled to the brim with popular science mystique. “The same effect—don’t ask me how, I don’t know—but the same non-linear effect also explains the pale. They use it in entroponetics. This is how the pale behaves when it sweeps over the world.” 

Mold

I've heard that in Estonian the word used for Pale is Hall, meaning both frost and mold, like a pale gray film that covers the surface of things. As the Pale takes Vaasa, fruits begin to grow mold. Some people choose to stay rather than leave the disaster zone.

The panic has cooled. In the strange indifference of the evacuation, whole families stay behind in Vaasa. There they play board games, in their houses, in their spacious apartments. They love vitamin-rich food, and when the pale is only a few days away, it’s always signalled by the same beautiful event. Fruits go mouldy. It grows vigorously on them. Children listen to oranges crackling on the table. Spores sprout from the pulp, apples are hairy with it. If you try to touch them, they crack open. No one knows why it’s like that. But few can muster the energy to be afraid of that time, and that’s why I say it’s beautiful. 

And later, when Zigi is living in a forest that's been taken by the Pale, even the animals have been consumed by it although they're still alive:

And to the dark forest, to the museum of natural history, where mould grows on the horns of the males and puffs of steam no longer rise from the kids’ nostrils. They still breathe—not oxygen, but pure pale. 

Turning into a protein mass

The mother of the missing girls sits in her home, waiting for the pale to take her:

Ann-Margret Lund also sits there somewhere in her kitchen, in the middle of the pale; her rooms are quiet and clean. The former teacher wears a beige jacket and an above-the-knee skirt, and watches the moulding apricots. […] Like everyone else, she can’t do anything in this extended stay, where one’s sense of the present slowly drifts away. But whereas the others dissolve into their memories, she simply disappears. It’s as if her life had never happened. The past is not awaiting her return. She just wanders around the rooms, adjusts her grandmother’s lace doily and bedspreads, arranges the curtains on the rails. And thus, tastefully, she refuses to indulge in those ecstasies which visit the human spirit when the world is disintegrating. Nothing leaves her hands, and nothing returns.  When Katla finally sinks into the pale, Ann-Margret Lund turns, without the slightest pleasure, into a protein mass. 

Hanging out in the Pale with the ghost of Ignus Nielsen

Years later, as an adult, Zigi has become immune to the effects of the Pale, and even stays in the middle of it in a tent, hanging out with the cytoplasmic spirit of a dead communist.

Human speech sounds out of place in the silence of the pale. It echoes in the gloom of the trees as Zygismunt trudges through the snow. There’s an old trick coined by the great entroponaut K. Voronikin, that you have to shout in the pale. Otherwise, you start to feel gloomy, and the past comes up. But Zygismunt needn’t be afraid of that. When he first entered the pale, he discovered to his great dismay that he couldn’t return like everyone else. Or rather—he could, but not where he really wants. This makes him indispensable to Mazov’s idea. The disappearance of the Lund children has literally given Zigi special entroponetic powers. 

He goes hunting for pale-poisoned ibexes. The phrase ‘protein mass’ comes up again. It seems that any human or animal in the pale for long enough eventually turns into a protein mass.

The entroponaut shakes himself. Snow falls from the shoulders of the anorak coat. He goes on alone. An hour of frozen machine tracks and hoofprints in the snow run along in the flashlight beam. And when a herd of ibex finally emerges from the darkness, they are frozen in place in the middle of the road, like an exhibit in a natural history museum. Some of the females sometimes jerk in place, sneezing; this is a nervous impulse, a muscle tremor. The backs of the stuffed animals are already covered with snow, but their snouts are still steaming, they’re still breathing—some for a few days, some for a week. An anorak-clad figure moves through the herd with the indifference of a professional until the beam of his flashlight casts the alpha male’s crown of horns as a shadow on the wall of spruce trees. Zygismunt looks into the animal’s glazed eyes. Its sense of time has broken down. An automaton’s primitive fragment of a brain strays in the pale faster than that of a human. This is how hunters from the outskirts go hunting in the entrokataa. Of course, they’ll eventually go mad from it as well, and one day they won’t return. But not Zigi, he has special abilities. He takes a pocket knife from his belt and slits the protein mass’s throat. 

[phantomphangphucker]

Phic Phight - Goo, Sleep, Repeat, Or Please Don’t

@everystarstorm @ LumianaKatenke

Danny had really bad luck with G.I.W. and Nocturne has precisely zero tolerance for their foolishness.

Nocturne grins maliciously, pouncing down on Phantom, the little prince in the making, a young god would didn’t get enough sleep. There are spectators, Phantom’s citizens, cheering the battle on, giving reverence to their master. As they should. His little Fraid and Makers hovering around, unable to get involved since they’re so far above such mortals. The human government fools still try, pathetic things; as if they could truly do anything either.

Nocturne swirls, twisting and bending around blasts; there’s not too much power behind it, expected, Phantom was still so young and had no interest in truly damaging most ghosts. Phantom smirking up at them, “you’re not a very good nighttime comforter! Because no one finds this assault comforting! And getting clawed in the face isn’t comfortable!”. That child and his way with words. He was so very fond of them much to the annoyance and groans of everyone in earshot.

Nocturne smacks him with their ghostly tail into a wall, grinning more, “one of these days I will knock you out!”, knock him out to stay asleep for awhile. But Phantom pops back out of the indent while sticking out his tongue, “and I’ll knock you back to sleep with the fishes!”. Ah the death jokes, no ghost made them quite like Phantom did.

Nocturne gets blasted past a couple buildings, going past one to see those human government fools setting up some large launcher. They have no interest with dealing with that, but perhaps they should not lead the child king over here. This was for play, to spar and tire the boy, a good nights rest after stretching out protective powerful muscles. So they zip up, into the sky, and fire a quick blast to send Phantom back a little. Only for those makers of his to hit him square in the back as a result, right over to where Nocturne was trying to not have Phantom go. Those fools, snarling quickly at the male maker, “insolent mortals!”, before moving to follow after Phantom.

They’re not quite fast enough. They don’t stop Phantom from getting hit by the large gooey rocket. It seemingly liquifies most everything from the shoulders down; sending the boy splattering into the pavement. They wanted Phantom asleep but this was Unacceptable! Roaring and tackling the human government worms, “how dare you dare harm a young one! Young zone’s hand and head! Little dignity! Sweet dear child!”.

It was pure chaos, immediate chaos, Jazz screaming as the ghosts ghostly tail wraps around her, Sam, and Tucker, basically flinging them at and in Danny. Sam muttering, “shit, shit, shit, shit”, while trying to push the bits of Danny soup back into a more coagulated pile.

Tucker ripping through his pockets, “thermos, fuck I should have a thermos right? Zone is that even a good idea?”.

Jazz snapping, “I don’t know Tucker, but you’re a better shot than I am and we have an issue!”. Tucker jerking his head up and wincing around, more G.I.W. agents had seemingly popped up out of nowhere… at least they were forcefully keeping the Fenton’s back. Small mercies. At least he managed to find two thermoses, passing them off to her and taking her pistol.

Tucker half kneeling, using a knee to help him aim, shooting two who shout back, “WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT! YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO REIST! CEASE YOUR DEFENCE OF A MONSTER AND MENACE!”.

Maddie shouting in the background, “WE HAVE MORE RIGHT TO IT THAN YOU!”.

“Silence or you will be placed under arrest for interfering with a government seizure!”.

Tucker wincing, “Sam!”.

“I’m busy helping Jazz! Tucker! Figure it out!”.

For the first time in a long time all three of them seriously wishing Val/Red or, heck, even Vlad, to show up. Tucker having to flatten himself, grabbing the back of Jazz’s shirt to get her on the ground too; a blast whizzing right over their heads. Him wincing at seeing a bit of Danny’s ‘goo’ spill out.

Jazz and Sam were honestly just stuffing what they could of half liquid Danny into the thermoses, not daring to actually suck him into the thing. And then there’s suddenly a bunch of Nocturne’s pillow shade ghosts around them, almost like a barricade, some throwing hands with and occasionally being destroyed by the G.I.W. agents.

G.I.W. agents scowling, struggling more than they’d like, “great, the monsters summoned minions”. Nocturne impales an agent with their elbow spikes, crushes the machine/vehicle completely underhand, and snarls again, form growing to cover the sky, “I HAVE NO TOLERANCE FOR THIS FOOLISH BEHAVIOUR!”.

Sam, Tucker, and Jazz all wincing; at this rate Nocturne was going to knock out the whole town again or start breaking buildings. Sam and Tucker exchanging looks before both sigh and shout, “EVERYONE LAY DOWN! THIS ONE’S A FLOATING KNOCK OUT GAS!”. And… surprisingly a few people actually listened, not the G.I.W. obviously, though people might also be hitting the ground to avoid getting caught in cross fire since it was well known that the G.I.W. did not give a single flying fuck about bystander casualties. At least the Pillow Shades give all three of them the time to focus on getting Danny into thermoses. Tucker ripping off his hoodie and passing it to Jazz to get the not soup shoulder, arms, and head wrapped up somewhat securely; Danny groans.

The three all stilling at Nocturne’s black starry arm slamming down over Danny with a harsh yet soft, “sleep child”. Danny doesn’t groan again and his face relaxes. Jazz is the only one that can manage to give a small, “thank you”.

Maddie has no clue what’s going on. The fight was mostly normal, her and Jack hoping to maybe get in a good shot or get some new samples, when suddenly the place was swarmed with G.I.W. agents. It’s been a long time since her or Jack have actually liked the G.I.W., them firing live rocket rounds at an observatory full of children was the last straw for her, and right now they’ve fully pissed her off. Her husband, Jack, was the one to hit the ghost first, they might have taken It down but It was still their hit first! They had more claim! But fighting this many agents was out of the question, especially with the ‘villain’ ghost summoning shades, it would do her kids no good for either of them to get arrested.

But at least she understands the G.I.W.’s actions, she can even rationalise what sounds like some teens actions to protect Phantom. The G.I.W. were hated by the teen populace, Phantom was disturbingly belove-d. She didn’t approve of some teens putting themselves in danger like this but at least it made sense. Now this ‘Nocturne’s’ actions? Those did not make a lick of sense. Why was It defending not only Phantom but seemingly also the teens that were defending Phantom? Why had It called Phantom a ‘sweet child’? It made no sense. Ghosts had no understanding of age, nonetheless childhood versus adulthood. Perhaps ghosts could tell when a ghost was a newer ghost, but sightings of Phantom have been recorded since ancient Egypt and It had been haunting Amity for multiple years now. It wasn’t a fresh ghost. The other terms It used seemed like merely other ways to say the same thing, linguistic complexity were not supposed to be truly possible with ghosts; Phantom was abnormal with Its use of puns and that was it, and Its heightened exposure to humans increasing Its vocabulary.

She watches, using the G.I.W.’s distraction to slip behind a different building, as part of this Nocturne ghost physically throws a G.I.W. agent through the air as Its form finally full blocks out all the light from the sky and sun. This ghost… was incredibly dangerous, far more than It had been while Phantom was fighting It. Do the ghosts ‘pull their punches’ when fighting Phantom? Why? How would any ghost have the self awareness to do such a thing? It didn’t make sense.

“MAD’S!”.

Maddie snapping her head to the side, seeing five of the pillow-like shades slamming Jack into a wall. “You let him go! You ectoplasmic fiends!”, raising her weapon only for a black starry portion of the ghost to push her down onto the ground. Jack slumping, unconscious, surrounded by grinning pillow shades that… lower him slowly? to the ground with happy? grins. The things even lay his head down gently? And now she’s getting lightheaded, foggy? Right those teens said It was a ‘knock out gas’ or something? Right?

G.I.W. agents are screaming in the background, the ghost lowers Its masked head to glower over her, “you, behave, your foolish words and thoughts bother the young one’s sleep far too much. You will be no bother to him now”. She glares, expecting the ghost to simply crush her, instead drifting off to sleep, eyes slowly closing.

Nocturne was not happy. Nocturne was not impressed. Nocturne was not willing to tolerate this foolishness. Phantom could act foolishly if the child so chose, as could his fraid, it could even be tolerated from those makers; but from human mortals who were not even his possessions or loyal servants? Hmph, absolutely not. They press their mass down on the buildings, through their own might or their Sleeper shades they send all inside to sleep. The ones outside put down gently, as the little prince would hate for harm to be done; the ones that listened to his little fraid will be promised lovely sweet dreams as their reward. The mortals who fight them however, they will be knock out by blows and impacts, only fitful nightmares awaiting them for their disrespect and foolishness.

Their Sleepers communicating that the prince’s fraid had gathered up what of him they could, good indeed, he was hurt, foolish mortals having dared to have done such to the Infinite Realms most precious one; to do so to any child ghost would be unacceptable.

They push portions of themselves through the veil between worlds, tearing opening a portal between the land of the living and the land of the dead. The young prince’s fraid and nest-mate could cart him off to where is best. Whether that be another ancient more familiar with his physique than them or one of the many clans that worshiped the child, or his Infinite Realm bound lair perhaps? The FrightKnight even? They wouldn’t object too much to them taking the little one to their own lair, but that would hardly do him much good beyond further gentle restorative sleep.

Phantom’s mortals scooping him and the cylindrical devices Phantom loved to use that they’d put the more liquified portions in, all three moving through the portal and Nocturne letting it snap shut right after. They had hardly any interest in spending energy maintaining a portal, when they had punishments to dole out.

These men, why so many of them feared being dirty they did not get, but they will make everything dirty then. Every inch of their machinery and weapons they have their Sleeper shades stuff them full with dirt, mud, animal manure. Every red liquid Nocturne could locate in the young one’s lair gets dumped on their suits, scratching their glasses up and imbedding them with rocks.

Those makers of his get their weapons destroyed but nothing more… besides unpleasant dreams of exactly what would befall this simple town without its lair master and protector.

Nocturne settles themselves over the city, content to keep everything inside trapped in slumber till the sweet little prince returned. Any outsider attempts to get in will be crushed, be they helicopter, tank, or other vehicle; all life forms residing inside said machines sent to slumber, bodies scattered around the parameter like dead flies surrounding a carcass.

FrostBite was having a good day, SwiftSnout had her baby perfectly fine, ColdStep’s aim had gotten noticeably better, and IceHorn’s sweetsuckle had finally produced berries. So, FrostBite was having a good day, was. He was until the Great One and his fraid and nest-mate showed up; he’d been so distracted by the Great One’s state that he hardly noticed that they somehow arrived in the middle of the foxdew den while he’d been feeding the little mongrels. The smell of sandalwood, rose, and patchouli that accompanied their arrival telling him that Ancient ClockWork had some hand in the peculiar sudden arrival, even if the portal was clearly one of Ancient Nocturne’s.

FrostBite rushing over to the children, The Great One smelled strongly of lavender and chamomile so he doubts the young god was unconscious of his own will. However… that appeared to be something of a kindness, considering his state. He had a minor cut on his head and a small burn on his shoulder, just beneath his shoulders he cut off jaggedly into goo, the goo half dripping and half floating vaguely attached and seeping into a worrying collection of thermoses. “What happened? Come, we’ll get you to the infirmary immediately”.

Lady Sam scowling, “G.I.W. happened, those jackasses”.

Miss Jazz, giving him a better explanation as he scoops up the Great One and the thermoses in his arms. Lady Sam, Pharaoh Tuck, and Miss Jazz all climbing on his shoulders as the young adult speaks, “he was sparring with Nocturne, he’s been skipping sleep again. Jack got a shot in on him and the G.I.W. took advantage of that”.

FrostBite nodding respectfully as they get into the infirmary, “ShardHeart, get the lay down capsule out, he’s mostly goo so we need to keep that all contained together”. She nods at him immediately and gets to work with professional ease.

Sam and Tucker grimace, dumping their thermoses into the capsule, trying to not splash it on Danny’s face. Tucker grimacing, “we’re not really sure what he got hit with, only that is was very big and rocket shaped”.

FrostBite nodding, “and this-”, nodding his head down at Danny, “-happened immediately?”. Both teens nodding immediately. “Alright, we’ll assume there’s some form of contaminating substance mixed in with him, since he’s not reforming and healing on his own”. ShardHeart hooking up a filtration mixture, effectively just dumping the resulting powder in with the Danny goo; his ectoplasm was basically already exposed so there wasn’t any need to ‘feed’ it into him. FrostBite pushing all three back away from the capsule as mist starts steaming out of it, impurities leaving Danny’s ectoplasm. LeftSnow sticking some kind of detector type tool into the mist, sucking it up, and frowning, “yeah this is a high corrosive, could have ended a weaker ghost”.

Sam crossing her arms, “so if they’d hit Danny with this when he was fourteen he’d probably have been ended”. LeftSnow nodding seriously, “that would be very likely, yes”. Sam just scowls and continues watching Danny from a safe distance. LeftSnow continuing to suck up the substance to make sure it doesn’t have the potential to mix in with the Zone’s free-floating ectoplasm.

After about ten minutes Danny just snaps back together as he’s supposed to, making a face and groaning a little, doesn’t wake up though. Jazz shaking her head, “Nocturne can be a bit of a pain”.

FrostBite chuckling, “it doesn’t help that the Great One ignores his need for sleep so often and readily”. Jazz shaking her head, “and I keep telling him how bad that is but somethings are more important to him than sleep”.

Sam scoffing, “not much different from you and your studying”.

“That will advance my career and it’s educational”.

“And Danny has needs and he’s helping people”, Sam nodding to herself, “that’s a better reason”.

Tucker shaking his head at the two girls, looking to ShardHeart, “is he good for us to take back home? I’m pretty sure Nocturne has basically just taken the whole place over and isn’t going to leave till the ‘little dignity’ is back”. FrostBite chuckles to himself but doesn’t comment.

ShardHeart hums and eyes the sleeping boy, “I would prefer to keep him here for observation, but he’s going to wreck things if he wakes up and realises anyone kept him here longer than absolutely necessary”. Sam, Tucker, and Jazz all laughing or smirking at that, because it was very true. Danny was a shit like that. Either way ShardHeart and LeftSnow waving them to go ahead, Sam and Tucker picking him up by his wrists and ankles. Jazz nodding, “now, how? Are we supposed to get back?”. Earning owlish blinks in response.

FrostBite sighs internally, he really had been having a nice largely relaxing day.

The G.I.W. were pissed their newest corrosion rocket -which may or may not have qualified as a war crime and possibly a violation of the Geneva convention- was supposed to completely dissolve any ecto-filth instantaneously, nothing more needed. Just reduce Phantom to goop, do crowd control, keep the Fenton’s from getting involved or claiming ownership, and collect the remains for further study. Phantom maxed out their ecto-scanners, It was a powerful monster, if they could eliminate It then the ghost issue would be solved and they could move on to that disgusting false afterlife where the creatures resided. But no, not only did it not fully work, but the other ghost that they had been banking on as a suitable distraction had been far stronger than they had been prepared for.

While one agent had managed to fire another round at the Nocturne ghost before passing out, however the ghost merely tore off the part of It that corrosively liquefied and threw it at them like feces.

The cleanliness violations were piling up rapidly. Head office would not be pleased.

A bunch of teenagers even managed to not only stop them from getting so much as a single sample but also were able to flee with the ghost. A complete failure and waste of their (the taxpayers) money… well not entirely. They’ve learned that at least this other strange ghost that maxes out their scanner would ‘protect’ Phantom, it confirmed their theories, Phantom was very much one of the monsters just toying with humans, except far more sinister. Phantom was trying to fool the American people, break down their distrust, and then like all other ectoplasmic filth attack the American people. It was far more a threat to national security and the American people than any other abomination. The fact that every agent that went near that town now became unresponsive was further proof; they were being blocked by a clear aggressor ghost from talking to, giving aid to, or reprogramming anyone while Phantom was mia. Clearly a plot. Clearly an attempt to stop humanity, America, from reclaiming her town from the clutches of Its kind. Vile monsters.

Then the large ghost swirls in on itself, funnelling down into the town, Agent F squinting, “go, get in there. The thing must have run out of steam. Get something of a foothold in there before Phantom returns or It regains its strength”, grumbling, “probably by eating someone, foul creatures. Those indoctrinated townsfolk would probably view the sacrifice as a blessing”. Multiple G.I.W. armoured vehicles that had been on stand by start moving to converge on the small town.

Nocturne grins, hunched over and coiled around the little prince, so much power and healed already. The Infinite Realm would bloom under him, they’re pleased not only for that but also that a child ghost hadn’t been ended on their watch. No child ghost, especially not this one, should be ended and especially not by living mortal hands. Pathetic living creatures, acting as if they’d earned their existence the way the dead have. They were only alive by the random chance hands of the reincarnation and creation cycle, ghosts had earned their place to exist by necessity and by suffering.

That darkly dressed fraid-mate puts her hands on her hips and glares, “you better wake him and everyone up or so help me I will find a way to fell an Ancient”. So headstrong, so commanding; as if she had any place to order them around truly. But, they’d… respect this ghost child’s fraid, the High Ghost Prince’s fraid.

So with an eye roll, they release their mental hold on the little one and his little lair-folk. The roar of those silly mortal vehicles approaching from the distance, they’re tempted to do something about it but well….

FrostBite huffs, cracking a set of knuckles, “this”, smirking wolfishly, “will be fun”.

The little prince grumbling a, “that’s nice, Frostypa”; while the young ones fraid basically yanks him out of Nocturne’s grasp, as if Nocturne wasn’t actively allowing them to do so. The boy is hardly worth sparring with now and he’s quite well rested as well, they’re content to take their leave entirely. Let those FarFrozen yetis deal with the silly government mortals that dare threaten a child ghost; and let all Phantom’s little lair-folk wake up to an interesting show.

By the time Jack woke up, he could hear chanting, the kind he’d expect to hear at a sports game actually!

“Woo! Go get ‘em yeti guy!”.

“That’s right! Sock him in the jaw! Go for the crotch!”.

“Burn! Baby! BURN!”.

“Who’s the ghost with the most!?! Not you! But still kick his ass!”.

Jack shaking his head and sitting up on the side of the street, right he’d got a shot in on Phantom and then all Hell broke loose and he got? knocked out? by a pillow ghost. At least it didn’t feel like he’d bumped his head!

It takes him a bit to get to where all the noise is coming from, expecting Mad’s to already be there (she is), and staring a bit. There was a yeti, a ghost yeti but still a yeti, snarling and throwing both G.I.W. vehicles and G.I.W. agents around like toys! The ghost even reminded him of himself even! The ghost laughing boisterously and grinning, all sharp teeth, happily.

But also! He’s never seen a ghost yeti before! Did It form based on common human myth and lore? People’s superstitions perhaps? So many possibilities! And clearly Mad’s had the same idea, since she’s hiding around a building taking notes. Heck, even Phantom is just observing somehow looking no worse for the wear!

A G.I.W. agent grumbles, “damn freaks, this town is completely insane”. Jack couldn’t even disagree with that! But also, the G.I.W. tried to buy away all his life’s work and he’s not about to actually side with them.

Phantom shouting, “tell him to suck on deez nuts!”. And for some absurd hilarious reason the yeti ghost actually does it. Jack can’t help but laugh, even if he didn’t get the darn ghost boy this time there was always more chances and he’d rather lose Phantom today than let the G.I.W. have his prize. Phantom was so strange, the things they could learn! That privilege belonged to proper ghost hunters! Not some silly government group!

Was Danny a fan of his random bullshit day? Obviously not! Nocturne went and rode his ass about his sleeping habits again, then his dad decided to shoot him one in the back like that wasn’t totally a cheap shot, and then G.I.W. decided to liquify his ass… and legs and stomach and feet. Sure he got to catch up on his sleep but he also probably gave his Frostypa a minor core attack or at least made the guy shake his head at Danny’s general bullshit; even if FrostBite made some comments after about it ‘having been a while’ since he ‘terrorised some humans’, good to know at least one or two ‘yeti’ sightings was probably ol’ Frosty messing with some poor idiot.

At least Danny didn’t really remember being half goo, even if Jazz told him it was very disgusting and Tuck said he was the consistency of syrup, Sam just smacked him and told him to pay more attention to his surroundings. Hey! It wasn’t like he really needed to, he was a tough cookie these days.

But the G.I.W. were chased out of town again, his sister and friends were disappointed in his dumbassery yet again, and his folks were so focused in on their new findings (ghosts can possibly be formed from myths and legends! Is this amazing! Apparent Phantom is still a child somehow! It’s my that weird! We should write another biased and bigoted paper based near entirely of our half baked assumptions! Aren’t you proud!?! Don’t you want to run FentonWorks some day!?! Do you want to help write a paper even though you’ll have to leave out all the actual facts you know!?!) that they couldn’t be bothered to chase Phantom him around for a while.

So everything’s an even win in his opinion. Even if even Val/Red called Phantom an idiot for thinking everything was a net positive. She shot him, he made a joke about their relationship being a little too sadomasochist for his liking, she shot him again; then he went home for some only one third burnt pasta and aunt Alicia’s pie (Danny did not have a slice. Danny could smell that someone peed in it. Jazz followed his lead. They both cringed at their dad having a slice merrily).

End.

Prompts: When the GIW/Fentons get a lucky shot on Danny during a ghost fight, severely hurting him, the ghost he'd been fighting suddenly gets very protective and attacks the ghost hunters. Something about them hurting a baby? GIW encounter leaves Danny down for the count, forcing his friends and Jazz to step in to defend him until he can get taken away to the Far Frozen.

[mpregeminem]

Okay here are some antics I think the BTR boys would get up to source: I’m a certified minnesotan who goes to duluth a few times a year

-the main mall in duluth is the miller hill mall. Totally generic, average mall, but it’s pretty much the main thing teens will do during the winter. I think they would get banned for life by starting a food fight in the cafeteria and they’d keep coming up with disguises to use and then subsequently getting banned again. there's also a mall called fitgers which is pretty cool because it used to be a brewery. i've only been there a few times so idk as much about it alas.

-speaking of malls, at some point they would come to minneapolis (i assume for say a hockey trip for example) and go to the mall of america. It’s the biggest mall in the western hemisphere and theres a zillion stores so you can imagine all the antics there. But in particular, they have an amusement park. It is currently nickelodeon universe but i think at the time it would’ve still been camp snoopy. I think they would have gotten banned by climbing up the rides and breaking something.

-While in minneapolis, i think they would’ve gone to the sculpture garden (it’s free). I think they would somehow make the cherry break off from the famous spoonbridge and cherry fountain

-They would also go to the science museum for sure. I think they would manage to knock over a dinosaur skeleton. But also they’d also just have all kinds of general antics. For example, they have a thing that blasts you with air to replicate sneezing and they’d 100% do that to each other. I can elaborate on this more I went to this museum sooo much as a kid but this is already gonna be so long lmao.

-While still in the area, they’d go to Valleyfair, which is like the main amusement park around here. Again, generic amusement park antics. But I also think they’d come around halloween, when they do ValleyScare, which is when they have like, haunted houses and scare actors and whatnot

-Going back to duluth, they would DEFINITELY spend time around canal park in the warmer months. It’s like this little touristy/shopping center in duluth. There’s a bunch of little shops and restaurants and a couple museums (including the irvin museum which is like a big ass historic boat and also as an aside they do like a haunted ship thing around halloween) around there. There’s a lakewalk they could walk along, there’s a lighthouse you can walk up to, and also there’s this like semi-submerged structure in the lake that people like to jump off of in the summer. 

-Also in the canal park area is the aerial lift bridge. The whole bridge lifts up when boats are gonna pass under. The guys would 100% get in trouble for trying to stay on the bridge while it’s going up

-Theres also this like, family fun center in canal park called adventure zone that i remember going to as a kid. it has like, an arcade and laser tag and stuff like that. obviously they would get kicked out of there almost immediately

-Theres a tower in duluth called enger tower that at least one of them would definitely fall out of and break an arm or something

-there’s a famous mansion called the glensheen mansion. Notoriously, there were some murders that happened there and tour guides aren’t supposed to talk about it during the tours (they’re usually okay fielding questions about after the tour) so I would imagine they would pester the poor tour guide about the murders/ghosts until the guide snapped asjhds

-less like, antic-y, but there used to be record shop called electric fetus that they probably would have gone to

-i think they would’ve been banned from the lake superior zoo for trying to pet the animals or something but i suppose that could happen at any zoo

- the downtown duluth area is on a really steep hill so i imagine in winter after it snowed they’d try to sled down it and almost get hit by cars

-Grandma’s marathon ends in canal park, so i think they’d fake like they ran the whole marathon to impress girls or something sadjhhka

-there are a lot of parks including state parks so i could imagine them getting like lost in the woods or whatever. in general in minnesota/duluth theres a lot of outdoorsy stuff like skiing, hiking, canoeing, kayaking, boating, jetskiing, ATVing, snowmobiling, that sort of stuff. fishing is really big because we have a zillion lakes lol. i was always a dork who just wanted to stay inside as a teen lol but teenage boys i knew growing up tended towards doing those outdoors stuff.

-an aside but i know the guys are hockey players so it's probably good to know the minnesota hockey team is the minnesota wild. im not a big hockey person but my understanding is they are incredibly mid.

hope this helps with your band yaoi bestie <3 obviously this is a non-exhaustive list but this is the big stuff that came to mind.

@partiallypearl @cant-get-enough-btr-forever @myloveforhergoeson @mpregloganmitchell @mpregkendallknight @btr-rewatch @bishounenbtr tagging you guys because you might be interested in their minnesota antics from a reliable source (my good friend penny)

penny i love love that you wrote all this i felt like i was taking a little tour with you around the cities <333

THEY HAD CAMP SNOOPY ARE YOU KIDDING ME... that's adorable, they definetly would've managed to catch that big snoopy on fire orrr get really trashed one night and try to steal it skdjsh (it seems huge on that picture so the idea of the guys clumsily trying to climb it to take it with them is cracking me up).

i remember you mentioning the spoonbridge once!! don't remember the context lol, i didn't know it was an entire garden waow.. yeah that cherry would suffer some damage with them around for sure.

that science museum looks like so much fun 😭 i think logan would ask them to go and they'd do it for him but end up having a blast together. if you do feel like telling more about what you liked about it as a kid please do bc im charmed by this place.

that picture of canal park's submerged structure is making me crazy bc those guys jumping into the lake could totally be them... one thing in general about these guys is they canonically Love the outdoors, they like to camp, the beach and they seemed to take well to california's warmer weather, i can see them taking any chance they got back home to enjoy the sun and the water without freezing their toes off lol. they also wanted to take snowboarding lessons according to the show (but james' mom made them take ballet instead <3), they'd take advantage of any change of adrenaline. the rush, one could say 🤨

THAT MANSION!! idk if you got that far but there's a ghost episode in season 1, and they obviously try to bust it. this would be right up their alley. i can see them plotting to split during the tour so they can catch that sucker (kendall's plan, brought on by carlos' request/begging skdjshs)

fun fact!!

but the fact that they're mid makes it so much funnier to me 😭😭😭 another mutual also told me the maple leafs are kinda hated? i honestly can see kendall choosing these teams out of spite as a young teen skdjdhd "oh you think they suck? well now i want in even more :)"

I LOVE THISSSSS thank you for taking the time to write it bestie ❤️❤️

[sinorim-pisani]

AO3 is down.....

it’s getting dark out....

You know what that means. DANNY PHANTOM WORD BLAST TIME!

tl;dr GHOST LAIRS ARE SENTIENT?? (danny phantom lore questions)

So on the one hand we have ghost cores, which are really fun and have so much lore potential, and we definitely need more on those.

On the other hand.....we have GHOSTLY LAIRS. 

An entire realm, varying in size and shape but having one purpose, and that is providing a haven for its ghost in the most reflective way possible?? A weird kind of mirror image of a ghost’s core traits (not “ghostcore traits, just the main principles of a ghost’s personality and values.....and also some actual ghostcore traits xD) manifesting in a physical manner?? like DUDE. COME ON. I would love to have a lair!

Does every single creature turned ghost develop a lair? Is there something comparable to a “pre-made ghostcore” theory that could exist for ghostly lairs? Is there a chance that lairs have some sort of sentience to them, in order to better adapt and mold to the ghost that it’s protecting?? Or is it more that a ghost’s subconscious is constantly managing and informing the lair and its adaptation and development? Like their subconscious self manifests almost separately from the ghost, and is active at all times to maintain a lair even when the ghost isn’t inside it? 

And what do ghostly lairs actually mean for the concept of community and communal engagement in the Infinite Realms?? From what we see and what we understand, there tends to be a common thread of the zone housing a number of common spaces for ghosts to work in and out of, in order to establish a more relatable sense of socialization and community - Walker’s Prison, Pariah Dark’s Keep, wherever Pandora operates out of, the Far Frozen etc.... I totally understand the sentiment of relatability, thought I can’t help but ask: if there exists a space that is made perfectly representative of you, that provides for your every need and comforts you and keeps you safe, and is constantly ADAPTING to how your needs change, then would you really need spaces in which to conduct socialization? Would you invite other ghosts to your lair? Or would remain comfortably private, conducting your ghostly life in a manner that best suites you inside your lair?

Although the obvious answers to the above questions would probably involve discussions of loneliness, social isolation, and a need/desire for interpersonal relationships, and maybe even thoughts of needed neutral ground....why build physical representations of real world locations to observe these needs, when your personal sanctum, as a reflection of your desires and of you yourself, would be just as lovely a place to host friends and just as hostile a place to host enemies? And if every ghost maintained a lair....there’s an infinite number of possibilities hidden behind an infinite number of doors, and an ever expanding space for even more lairs and doors. 

Perhaps I’m thinking of a ghost’s lair in the wrong way - perhaps, rather than a home for the ghost, they’re more like....the physical manifestation of the safest, most comforting part of their own mind. An inner sanctum, as opposed to a daily abode. 

In that case, what determines how a lair manifests and operates? Where a ghost’s core may possibly be said to develop based on a number of factors -- personal values, circumstances of core development, life choices and life course, possible beings of core pre-determination -- a ghost’s lair, while partially determined by personality, life course, and values, may develop its base structure and operations based entirely on a ghost’s Obsession.

I feel that Obsessions can be directly linked to the idea of the “safest part of the mind” - a ghost’s Obsession is so inherent to their being that partaking in and fulfilling said Obsession seems to be an integral part of ghost feeling safe and comfortable and relieved. It almost doesn’t make sense to separate an Obsession from something like an inner sanctum! 

.....this is a long post ya’ll PLEASE STOP ME AHHHH

Some questions for you to ponder:

What determines how a Ghost Lair manifests and operates?

Are Ghost Lairs more like a ghost’s home, or a ghost’s sanctuary?

What maintains a Lair? Is there a chance that the Lair itself develops sentience in order to provide for their ghost? Or is it possible that a ghost’s subconscious manifests permanently to inform the Lair’s development and ability to adapt?

If there as many Lairs as there are ghosts and ghostly creatures, why does the Ghost Zone need permanent, community spaces for socialization? 

Is a Lair structurally based on a Ghost’s Obsession, and if so, will the physical environment of a Lair ever change? The ghost may be able to manipulate myriad aspects of the Lair, but would they ever be able to overhaul the environment of the Lair itself, the very landscape it exists in, or no? 

What would your Lair look like? Or if you have a Danny Phantom OC, what would their Lair look like?

Wow I am super long-winded. I just think that Danny having a Lair is pretty neat!! A cozy space that’s mostly cool in temperature to provide for his cold core, that’s probably filled with the most amazing star gazing locations, and an absolute kaleidoscope of galaxies and nebulas that he can fly in and be himself! ^.^ 

[zhelin-thames]

This is after danny met Aquaman

[Justice League Group Chat]

Aquaman: I had assistance from a ghost child today. He saved Atlantis from a haunted Kraken. Wonder Woman: A haunted Kraken? How is that even possible? Danny: [pops into the chat] Ghost Zone stuff. Long story. Green Lantern: Who added him to this chat? The Flash: I did. He’s funny.

Wonder Woman: A child fighting such dangers? That seems irresponsible. Danny: [floating in the Watchtower, eating chips] Technically, I’m half-dead, so what’s the worst that could happen? Wonder Woman: …You need guidance. Danny: That’s what Aquaman said, but he was yelling it underwater, so I kinda tuned him out.

Superman: Wait, are we seriously considering working with a ghost? Batman: He’s efficient. Superman: He’s a teenager! Danny: Relax, Big Blue. I’m pretty good at this hero stuff. Also, I’m not the one who keeps losing my glasses as a disguise. Superman: …

The Flash: So, like, how haunted are we talking with the Kraken? Danny: Full-on glowing, roaring, ectoplasm-spitting haunted. Green Lantern: Sounds messy. Aquaman: My realm was in chaos! Danny: [grinning] And you screamed. A lot. Aquaman: [muted himself in the chat]

Cyborg: Okay, but seriously, kid—what are your powers? Danny: Flying, invisibility, intangibility, ecto-blasts, ghost sense, a killer sense of humor and more..... The Flash: Don’t forget sarcasm. Danny: Oh, right. That’s my ultimate weapon.

Green Lantern: How does being half-ghost even work? Danny: Ghost portal accident. I don’t recommend it. Wonder Woman: A child meddling with dangerous technology? Danny: Blame my parents. They’re mad scientists. Batman: [suddenly paying attention] Tell me more about this ghost portal.

Superman: I’m not sure a teenager belongs in the Justice League. Danny: [shrugs] Don’t worry, I’m not joining. You guys are way too serious. The Flash: Hey, I’m fun. Danny: True. You and Aquaman are the only ones I’d hang out with. Aquaman: [unmuted] I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted.

[Back in the Watchtower]

Danny: [floating next to Batman] So, do all of you have tragic backstories, or is that just a Gotham thing? Batman: … Danny: I’ll take that as a yes.

Cyborg: Hey, Danny, wanna spar? Let’s see how ghost powers hold up against tech. Danny: Sure, but if I phase through you, don’t take it personally. Cyborg: [laughs] Oh, it’s on.

[daringdoombringer]

Skylands robot biology headcanons because I frickin love robots

Arkeyans are the only known examples of natural robots that are made from “organic metal” and weren’t made by anyone other than each other, but most just kinda appeared one day. Due to many events (implications of in game lore and stuff I learned from the Book Of Kaos) natural/original Arkeyans nowadays are quite rare and mostly extinct.

Thousands of Arkeyan ruins and pieces are scattered all across Skylands. Arkeyan armor is often being recycled and used in other more modern things. It is highly sought after by technomancers due to its “organic” nature and the unique magic it possesses allowing it to stretch and grow.

Arkeyans include some Skylanders such as Bouncer, Drill Sergeant, Chop Chop, and I guess Krypt King? Although considering King’s a ghost possessing a deactivated suit of Arkeyan armor, that would technically make him a reanimated corpse. Nice.

All other robots who aren’t Arkeyans are built by other people or even each other. I love the idea of them being able to buy different parts to be bigger/taller and change how they look, I’m now imagining stalls in big marketplaces selling those. These would include Skylanders such as Magna Charge, Gearshift, High Volt, Wind-Up, etc. I like to think some of these manmade robots such as Spy Rise and Jawbreaker, are “hybrids” having been made with some recycled Arkeyan parts.

I wouldn’t necessarily count Blast Zone and Ignitor as “robots,” they’re more of a “fire inhabiting suits of armor” kind of thing. But I bet they would benefit from the spare parts market in case they ever loose or heavily damage pieces of their armor.

[max-mcat]

Call of Duty HC’s but they’re random

-141-

Price:

-he/him

-absolutely wears fluffy socks around base/on leave, loves ridiculous patterns

-was the popular but also a loner kid in high school; knew a lot of people but only talked to like 3 people

-ambivert; will socialize to a certain point

-RBF, scares recruits by “glaring” at them (he is totally zoned out)

-actually dislikes most common teas; loves chai and jasmine

Ghost:

-any prns

-avid phonk/punk/metal listener, loves loud music

-had a goth phase, it’s where he got most of his skeleton aesthetic from

-kid who broke rules but somehow never got in trouble with teachers/authority figures

-enjoys sitting with 141 and just listening to them chat, not having the talk but still being included

-#autisticgang

-agender, never felt like he was a guy or girl, he just *is*

Soap:

-he/it/xe

-average physics enjoyer, will ramble for hours to anyone unlucky enough to catch him talking about it

-tinnitus, always says “what?” like 7 times before he can hear someone’s question

-people pleaser, scared of being made fun of, stems from bullies in high school due to xyr being outed as pan (pan!soap truther btw, he does not care)

-goes nonverbal sometimes, uses BSL to communicate, learned it from Ghost

-a master braider, can do super complex braids cuz its little siblings always wanted him to do their hair

-middle child that had to parent everyone (parents, older siblings, younger siblings)

-AuDHD

Gaz:

-he/she

-mommas boy, loves his mom more than anyone

-hates the cold, literally can’t deal with it, turns up the heat as soon as it hits 60 F

-ate New Orleans cuisine once and had a soul blasting experience, thinks about it at least once a day

-white magic believer, mom was pagan so she grew up around spirituality, makes moon/sun water, cleanses his space, celebrates pagan holidays

-hyper mobile, loves to freak out Price by bending in weird ways or doing the thumb behind the knuckle trick

[flowers-of-io]

I’ll kick the hornet nest and say Witch Queen got a downer ending, but it’s, ah, a subtler failure that took us over a year to realise? At least that’s how I read it: we technically win, but really, what have we achieved? The Traveler is back (but our faith in it is cracked; it had done the unthinkable, and now we can’t be sure if it won’t leave again), the Lucent Hive are subdued (but they still have the Light; they’re still our greatest enemies, blessed by our god), Savathun is dead (but she is our only viable source of intel on the Witness, and we won’t survive this war without her knowledge, so we’re inevitably gonna crawl back to her for help eventually). We’ve won, but at what cost? We’ve also done the unthinkable; we’ve still killed Ghosts.

But I agree, TWQ is not out Darkest Hour. It’s a bit of a different story altogether; it’s not about losing completely, it’s about a victory that tastes like a loss.

I LOVE Lightfall’s downer ending, I love how Caiatl says, “We’ve just lost”, and I love how gut-punchy it is, how the Traveler is the cost we pay and how we have to choose between it and Ghost. The final mission is a BLAST. Caiatl’s presence in that story is incredible. The fireteam dynamics between her, Nimbus and Osiris (and Rohan) are perfect. And I had fun playing through Lightfall! I really really did! At first I was extremely surprised to see the overall negative reaction to it when I finally emerged from my gamer zone and checked social media. Beyond Light and Witch Queen and Forsaken before that were emotional rollercoasters; I cried during Witch Queen; my guts still twists when I think about Forsaken. It was nice to have some fucking levity in this game for once. I love Nimbus and what they bring to this story so much, especially paired with their very real grief over Rohan (which is palpable, but not stifling; it makes them determined rather than apathetic).

I also think this is Lightfall’s problem.

Maybe it’s just me, but… I don’t really feel the stakes? The story opens with a huge space battle scene, we watch Guardians get literally sliced into ribbons, we see Osiris just fuck off Light knows where, we see the Traveler do the sonic blast and it’s intense and insane and then there’s the Witness standing against it and holding its own with nothing but a gesture. We leave the battlefield and go to Neomuna, yes, but all the while we’re there, the battle is still going on. Remember how the HELM’s windows shut in the first cutscene? Well, the shutters lift in the last one and the crew is still standing there. Not much time has passed! If I were to estimate, it’s been a few days, maybe five at most, certainly less than a week.

But then we’re in Neomuna and it’s just an action-packed adventure complete with a Strand obstacle course and getting Neomuna’s systems back online or whatever, and that whole Vex mission in Radiosonde that has nothing to do with the main plot, like… That’s fine. That’s fun. But it doesn’t work in a tense, clock-is-ticking story where we’re supposedly doing all we can as fast as we can to fend off Calus while up there Guardians are holding off against the Witness and getting sliced to pieces. It doesn’t feel like the Darkest Hour because it’s… not particularly dark? Other than the first Radial Mast mission where Caiatl saves our ass, Rohan’s sacrifice, and the final stand against Calus, I don’t really feel the urgency or any sense of pervading doom that we should be feeling considering what the stakes are. It’s an action movie! When I saw that first Lightfall title card revealed back in 2020, and especially the name, I was like, oh fuck. But the ‘Light fall’ we got is 85% a Bruce Willis movie in vapourwave and it just clashes so weirdly with that 15% that is actually unfathomable sacrifices and a gruelling failure.

I don’t know if that’s the reason for most of the criticism Lightfall gets (and I don’t necessarily care what reddit thinks), but that’s what I think is my problem with it.

(Also gosh the CloudArk stuff and lorebooks being pandemic-era fiction… I didn’t think about it before but I CAN SEE IT omg)

I think with Lightfall like. It's fun. I had a good time. A blast, even! Especially with the gameplay, even when I got frustrated because I was playing Legendary and I'm not a good gamer.

It's action movie fun. Which is what it intended to be, really, from all the tropes and the pacing of it. But it got bodied with sudden roadmap changes and Witch Queen as video game Oscar bait.

Yeah, I think it could have used a breather to bond more with Rohan especially, but there was in-game justification for going fast and I'm sure the format A Destiny Expansion(tm) limited the team. We saw it bad in Witch Queen's seasons, and Bungie acknowledged that yeah the seasons structure was limiting them. As someone who works in software dev, nobody likes having to make things worse. But it happens a lot. Sometimes in really bullshit ways that the software folks wouldn't expect to be that level of bullshit, let alone anyone who isn't working with the software day in and day out. And by bullshit I mean "massive overhaul of the entire system just to make one tiny change" kinds of bullshit. Again, nobody likes it. I promise you.

Back to Lightfall. It's a fun action movie. It's also the plot point we'd been hurtling towards since Witch Queen, and probably even well before that: The Darkest Hour. We're struggling to use this new power in time, the mysteries around us have unraveled but in the end it's too late for us to get the upper hand, and it nearly costs us everything. In the year beforehand, we'd been losing in one way or another at the end of the seasons: Crow kills the Psion, our rituals fail to stop Calus, Eramis gets away, Rasputin dies. The Witness accesses the Traveler.

What it also does is it sets up the rest of the year for our Triumphant Finale. We get a thread to follow - how to get into the Traveler - and chase it through the year, alongside other threads like what the Veil is and how we're gonna deal with Xivu Arath. As of the end(ish) of Wish, we've got our answer and are primed for The Final Shape as our finale.

But first we had to have The Darkest Hour. Which, in the short term, being what it is, is a bummer. No getting around it. It's also part of why comparisons to Witch Queen went awry, IMO.

Witch Queen is, as I said before, the Oscar bait, insofar as an MMO looter-shooter has Oscar bait. It puts the tangled web front and center instead of tracing one thread and then zooming out to show the whole thing. It's more philosophical in nature, sitting back and asking us whether we think we're special and what really separates us from one of the enemies we hadn't forged alliances with yet: the Hive. And, of course, if we'd noticed the puppetmaster behind it all. It ties up the question that's been going on since Forsaken: are we the bad guys? (No, not really, we're struggling to survive the way everyone else is. Which, nobody else we've been fighting is really "the bad guy" either.)

It's a really good storyline! I loved it, even if, honestly, I didn't like the gameplay as much as Lightfall. I think it's earned its good reviews and positive reception.

But it is the Oscar bait. And unlike Lightfall, its plot role didn't require the same downer ending. It could sprawl, and honestly? I don't think it would have worked as our Darkest Hour. Not without screwing up the story and making a jumbled mess. Seriously, I don't think Destiny's "everyone gets a second chance" philosophy would have carried well at all if The Darkest Hour was when the Hive got Ghosts. Instead it would have reinforced our misconception at the beginning of Lightfall - that we are the sole rightful Lightbearers and that the Hive getting the Light was a wrongdoing.

Destiny did need something between Witch Queen and The Final Shape. And they moved things - but announced it less than a year before Lightfall released. At their big press conference-y deal, but still. Limited time for folks to get the news.

And then it came out and it was an action movie, not Oscar bait. But it followed Oscar bait, so that's what the expectation was.

Personally, I'm fond of, say, Moonlight. Fantastic movie. Beautiful and heartfelt. I enjoyed it and I think it is worthy of its high praise. But if you ask me what my favorite movie is, I'll say it's a tossup between Pacific Rim and Mad Max: Fury Road. They fit different niches in the cultural ecosystem - Moonlight isn't a bad Pacific Rim and Pacific Rim isn't a bad Moonlight. Not unless you pit them against each other despite their vast differences.

Also I remember there was lots of complaining about how empty Neomuna was at first, but everything about the CloudArk and especially the lorebook is such early pandemic-era fiction.

Lightfall is a good action movie. Witch Queen is good Oscar bait. Both of them have their strong points and weak points. There are technical factors that limit things. There are other external factors that limit things (looking at you, upper management).

It's fair to critique a story but like, I dunno. Bungie's devs, writers, and artists aren't idiots or evil or out to get you specifically. Lightfall is fine but you can't - and shouldn't - expect it to be Witch Queen.

Please, for the love of everything holy, don't let us repeat the nasty bitchy maelstrom we got around Lightfall. Or I'll start shitting in ovens.